As Mattogno rightly pointed out in his otherwise self-defeating statement addressed in Part 2, Section 5, it follows from my assumption of an incomplete combustion of the corpses on the extermination camps’ pyres (an assumption that, as we have seen, is borne out by ample evidence) that I must consider an amount of human cremation remains "much higher than the theoretical".

Of the carbonized remains I showed in Images 2.4 to 2.6 (Part 2, Section 1), the least reduced seems to be the "pyrolyzed test rabbit", which was reduced to 16.97 % of its original mass. I shall therefore assume that the remains of the corpses cremated on the extermination camps’ pyres made up 17 % of the original mass, as opposed to the 5 % ash assumed in MGK’s Sobibór book[296]. As concerns wood, I’ll start by using the percentages stated in the source[297] mentioned earlier in the same book[298], 6 % in case of fresh wood as Mattogno did[299]and 10 % in case of dry wood. The specific weights of human ash and wood ash I’ll consider are the same that Mattogno considered Mattogno & Graf’s book about Treblinka[300]: 0.5 g/cmᶟ for human ashes, 0.34 g/cmᶟ for wood ashes. As concerns the volume of the mass graves I’ll consider the following:
For Bełżec: the 21,310 mᶟ estimated by Prof. Kola for the 33 mass graves he identified. This is conservative considering the probable further burial pits pointed out by Alex Bay[301]. However, as Bay provides no information about the size of these pits, I’ll have to make do with Kola’s estimate.
For Sobibór: the volume of pit nos. 1 to 6 discovered by Prof. Kola, corrected for sloping (see critique, Table 7.2 on p. 394) plus the volume of grave nr. 7 estimated by Prof. Kola (27 m³ - this is conservative because grave n.º 7 was probably much bigger, as pointed out in Part 3, Section 2), plus the 250 m³ of the newly discovered grave nr. 8[302]. Total rounded volume: 13,024 m³.
For Treblinka: the 61,762 mᶟ required to bury 726,441 corpses in the extermination sector at the concentration (11.76 corpses per cubic meter) considered possible by Alex Bay[303].
For Chełmno: the 16,179 mᶟ of the burial graves nos. 1 to 4 (see critique, Table 7.3 on p. 400), plus the 4,096 mᶟ I estimated for the 11 ash disposal pits called the called the "fifth grave" by archaeologists[304], for a total of 20,275 mᶟ.
The calculations based on this input, assuming the theoretical scenarios of cremation only with dry wood and only with fresh wood[305], are shown in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 below.

Table 4.1 – Weight and volume of cremation remains and proportion of grave space occupied by such remains, assuming cremation with dry wood

Table 4.2 – Weight and volume of cremation remains and proportion of grave space occupied by such remains, assuming cremation with fresh wood

Pursuant to the already mentioned document from the British Environment Agency, whereby a typical pyre for 300 cows at the time of the British FMD crisis in 2001 could leave 15 tons of carcass ash and 45 tons of other ash to be disposed of, Mattogno (p. 1449) argues that I should have calculated the total amount of ash as follows:
15 tons of ash from the carcass, or 10% of the carcass mass;
45 tons of ash from the fuel, or 30% of the carcass mass;
60 tons of total ash, or 40% of the carcass mass.

As concerns the carcass ash Mattogno’s percentage is lower than what I considered in the above tables (17%). As concerns the ash from the fuel his reasoning is fallacious insofar as the fuel-to-carcass ratio was much higher in the British FMD pyres than the fuel-to-corpse ratio in the pyres at the extermination camps – 2.15:1 according to my calculations (see Table 2.32 in Part 2, Section 5), 2.82 according to Mattogno. What Mattogno might argue – and he so does, albeit in an unnecessarily elaborate way – is that I should apply the percentage of solid combustible materials that are left as residue in FMD pyres, instead of the 6-10 % stated in his aforementioned source. That percentage applied to dry wood, as well as it’s equivalent for fresh wood, are shown in the table below (the amounts per unit of fuel are the same as in Table 2.32 of Part 2).

Table 4.3 – Ratios of solid fuel residue/solid fuel, based on information from the British Environment Agency about a typical pyre for 300 cows at the time of the British FMD crisis in 2001

Applying these ratios for solid fuel residues instead of those in Tables 4.1 and 4.2, we get the following:

These are the volumes of cremation remains assuming that solid fuel was solely or predominantly used for cremation. As mentioned in Part 2, Section 4, the availability of sufficient solid fuel, namely wood, presupposes supplies from outside the camp, such as is evidenced for Sobibór and especially Chełmno. Without such outside supplies and the camp’s own lumbering teams not being able to procure sufficient wood, the predominant external fuel, like in the Dresden pyres, would have to be liquid fuel like gasoline, diesel and crude petrol.

In Part 2, Section 1 and Part 3, Section 2, I presented a calculation of the relation between solid and liquid fuel in the Dresden pyres, which deliberately overestimates the former and yet leads to a relation of about 38 % solid fuel vs. 62 % liquid fuel. Assuming that, like at Dresden, only 38 % of the fuel used for cremation was solid fuel, the volume of cremation remains and the percentage of grave space theoretically occupied thereby changes as follows:

Table 4.6 – Weight and volume of cremation remains and proportion of grave space occupied by such remains, derived from Table 4.4 assuming that 38 % of the total fuel used for cremation was solid fuel.

Table 4.7 – Weight and volume of cremation remains and proportion of grave space occupied by such remains, derived from Table 4.5 assuming that 38 % of the total fuel used for cremation was solid fuel.

These tables render it unnecessary to address Mattogno’s further calculations and his rambling – including the pathetic self-projecting accusations of "bad faith" – about the critique’s Tables 8.39 to 8.43, which contain several possible scenarios as concerns corpse and fuel residues at Nazi extermination camps based on data about cremation of carcasses[306]. I thus move on to p. 1456, where Mattogno addresses evidence suggesting that liquid fuel was indeed the predominant combustion agent at Bełżec, namely the already mentioned expert opinion by coroner Dr. Pietraszkiewicz whereby the ash he examined was predominantly of human origin and only a small part came from wood. Mattogno knows no better than to accuse the coroner of manipulation, claiming that "it is a simple hyperbole to say that there was a huge amount of human remains" and that "the illustrations shown by Muehlenkamp as evidence and by me render this statement simply farcical (see chapter 11, point 3)". This pathetic argument was duly addressed in my discussion of the magnum opus’ chapter 11[307].

Mattogno then turns to the question how much of the cremation remains ended up inside the mass graves as opposed to being scattered elsewhere or taken away from the camp. He starts with Bełżec, where the scattering of ashes in fields and woods near the camp was mentioned by at least one witness, Rudolf Reder, who was told by local inhabitants that after cremation "the bones were ground and the wind scattered the ash over fields and woods". Mattogno protests that Reder’s account is "historically unfounded" because Reder erroneously mentioned 1944 (instead of 1943) as the year in which the graves were opened and their contents burned. However, it does not logically follow from this dating error that what Reder was told about the scattering of the ash is also mistaken, so Mattogno adds the argument that "Reder mentions the activity of the wind which could “scatter [zerstäuben]” only the dust, and therefore an insignificant part of the ashes", as opposed to a deliberate scattering of the ashes by the SS staff. The "insignificant part" argument is amusing as Mattogno had earlier (p. 1451) lectured me about the exact opposite, namely the predominance of fly ash in the total ash mass[308].

Mattogno’s last card in this respect, which he also welcomes as confirmation of the reduced cremation period (110 instead of 150 days according to Gley, or longer according to Ukraiński) is the "report about the end of the Polish investigations about Bełżec", according to which the ashes were buried. It is understandable that the investigators reached this conclusion after having conducted excavations yielding huge amounts of ash along with incompletely burned or unburned human remains[309]. However, this doesn’t exclude the scattering of a large part of the ashes, by wind or deliberately by the SS, considering what Reder learned from local inhabitants and the evidence to such scattering or other disposal at the other three extermination camps. Why should Bełżec have been the only camp where all cremation remains were buried?

When it comes to Sobibór, Mattogno freaks out and hollers about "the well-known lie – based obviously only on testimonies about the utilization of the ashes of the cremated as fertilizers for the fields, which is the equivalent of the lie about the human soap". Actually there is no equivalence between a phenomenon described by several eyewitnesses and the wartime "human soap" rumor, testimonies are valid and important evidence in historiography and criminal investigation, and if Mattogno yells "lie" he has to demonstrate that the eyewitnesses made statements against better knowledge about this detail.

This is what he feebly tries to do over the next few pages regarding the witnesses I mentioned, but he stumbles right away over Jakob Biskobicz, whose account of having been ordered by Wagner to "scatter the human ash, which was assigned to me from the camp Nr. 3, in the vegetable garden in Sobibór" he cannot show to have been a lie, so he has to content himself with the rhetorical question how much ash that "veggie garden" could absorb. Quite a lot over a period of one year, especially if it was dimensioned so as supply the camp staff, guards and inmates with vegetables.

The witness Kurt Thomas seems to be an easier target for Mattogno’s discrediting efforts, but he isn’t. His mention of a "Verbrennungsschacht" (cremation shaft) can, notwithstanding Mattogno’s protestations to the contrary, be understood as referring to a pit in which the cremation roaster was set up. His statement that "the claws of a crane pulled the corpses out and into the shaft" doesn’t imply that the corpses were placed onto the roaster by the crane, again contrary to Mattogno’s interpretation. His mention of "firebombs" instead of liquid fuel (besides coal and wood) is at odds with other testimonies, but then Kurt Thomas, like every inmate witness of Sobibór, didn’t get to witness the cremation device and procedure from close up (of the inmates who did none survived). The same goes for his description of the gassing process, which he wrongly claimed (with the caveat "if my memory does not fail me") to have been carried out with "Cyklon". His mention of wood-felling by a detachment of detainees doesn’t contradict the abundant use of gasoline (in addition to such wood) for cremation, contrary to Mattogno’s argument, and even if it did that would be irrelevant to the witness’s credibility. Finally, his exaggerated estimate of the number of victims (750,000-800,000) is nothing one should hold against the traumatized survivor of an extermination camp, whose ability and inclination to count exactly were limited by circumstances and the shock of his experience. None of all this rules out the possibility that Thomas witnessed and accurately recalled the loading of ashes into barrels for shipment to Germany, or the use of "ash, mixed with unburned coal and the dirt from the shaft", to "sprinkle the roads in the camp due to the sabulosity of the soil".

In this context it is amusing to see Mattogno, who complains about his opponent’s "hypocrisy" ad nauseam (without it being clear where exactly the "hypocrisy" is supposed to lie in each case), accuse this writer of what is one of Mattogno’s own favorite practices, as he mumbles about my "opportunistic and deceitful method, which consists of taking single elements of contradictory testimonies and using them to compose a historical “reconstruction”". Actually there’s nothing "opportunistic and deceitful" about using parts of a testimony based on the objective criteria of plausibility and corroboration, which is what I do (and what historians also do). What is "opportunistic and deceitful" is using in support of one’s arguments selected snippets from a testimony otherwise dismissed as wholly unreliable, based on no criterion other than convenience – a practice that Mattogno is notorious for.

Mattogno’s next target is bystander witness Bronisław Lobejko, who learned from Ukrainian guards that the human ash was mixed with gravel and scattered upon the camp’s roads and paths, whereas unburned bones were crushed by Jewish inmates with hammers and then mixed with grit. After yelling "hearsay" (which is a source of historical evidence, and also of judicial evidence in numerous cases), Mattogno lamely argues that Lobejko’s description of the cremation facility contradicts my reconstruction of the same (which is not the case, and if it were that would be irrelevant) and provided an exaggerated estimate of the number of victims (800,000) and an obviously inaccurate description of the killing method (bottled gas). None of this excludes the accuracy of what Lobejko recalled having been told about the ash disposal, moreover as this is in line with other testimonies.

Regarding bystander witness Jan Piwoński, who recalled that the Germans transported away "even the ash of the burned corpses", Mattogno again points to an exaggerated estimate of the number of victims (as if that would mean anything regarding the detail in question), and just as irrelevantly claims that the witness didn’t recall to have heard anything about "dousing
the corpses with fuel", unlike other witnesses I mentioned in Part 1[310]. Interestingly Mattogno had earlier (p. 1310) quoted the same witness with a statement whereby a guard had told him that "in the vicinity of the mass graves a pit around two meter deep was dug, that in this pit a kind of grate was constructed from railway tracks, and that on this grate the root stumps previously doused with some liquid were put".

As concerns Treblinka, Mattogno refers to his blunder in point 18 of chapter 12, which was already pointed out in Part 1[311].

On p. 511 of the critique I had addressed Mattogno’s claim that at Bełżec "the graphs of the analyses of the 137 drill cores presented by Kola show that the ash in the graves is normally intermingled with sand, that in more than half of the samples the layer of ash and sand is extremely thin", and that furthermore "out of the 236 samples, 99 are irrelevant, and among the 137 relevant ones more than half show only a very thin layer of sand and ash, whereas among the remainder the percentage of sand is not less than 50%, and the thickness of the sand/ash layer varies greatly."[312]I had pointed out that Mattogno had not explained how he had managed to determine, on hand of the schematic representations of core samples in Kola’s book, how high the ash content detected in each of the samples shown was. Mattogno doesn’t improve on that shortcoming now, merely providing the wisecracker quip (p. 1462) that he had established the ash content in each of the samples "based on the respective captions published by Kola". A substantiation of his quantitative conclusions – which do not follow from Kola’s captions – is still missing.

Further arguments in this context – namely that current concentrations of cremation remains in the mass graves may be much lower than the original ones due to leveling works and robbery digging, which scattered the larger part of the ashes across the surface as pointed out by Prof. Kola[313], and that the excavations at Bełżec directed by judge Godzieszewski’s on October 12, 1945, according to which there were layers of cremation remains well above two meters below ground[314], belie Mattogno’s claim that the sand cover layer of the Bełżec mass graves had been two meters thick – Mattogno simply ignores as he moves from Bełżec to Chełmno.

Regarding that camp I had explained why a 1988 analysis of soil samples revealing just "some percent" of human ash in these samples meant nothing in favor of Mattogno’s contentions. I had also taken issue with Mattogno’s assumption that these samples came from ash disposal pits "4 meters deep and 8 meters wide" described by Judge Bednarz, i.e. from pits making up the "fifth grave" identified by archaeological research in 2003/04. Mattogno furiously hollers (p. 1463) that "This has nothing to do with a “fifth grave” of which Muehlenkamp fantasizes", although his quote of Bednarz’s description of these ash disposal pits matches an archaeologist’s conclusions about the "fifth grave"[315]. Thus he reveals that his earlier assumption had concealed from his readers the fact that the 1988 sample had actually come from "the crematory oven", and makes a big deal out of that oven’s description as a place containing a huge amount of crushed human bones, ash and bone dust – as if that description contradicted or was contradicted by the identification of "only an irrelevant percentage of bone remains" in the sample. What Mattogno calls "irrelevant" is actually quite relevant considering that, even if all cremation remains of human bodies and solid combustibles had ended up in the burial and ash disposal pits and none had remained by the cremation facilities or been disposed of outside the camp[316], the remains would at the very most (see Table 4.5) have filled up 20 % of these pits’ volume.

Regarding Sobibór, MGK had in their Sobibór book[317]attempted to reduce the amount of cremation remains found by Prof. Andrzej Kola in his 2001 investigation, by creatively interpreting their own translation of Kola’s report. Thus Kola’s statement whereby "Particularly noticeable traces of cremation occurred in the lower parts of the graves where distinct layers of scorched bones, with a thickness up to 40-60 cm, could be identified" was taken as meaning that the "particularly noticeable" traces of cremation were the only such cremation remains found and that there was only one layer "with a thickness up to 40-60 cm", although Kola had affirmed neither. Striking out against my critique of these misinterpretations, Mattogno accuses me of a misinterpretation of my own: I’m supposed to have argued that Kola’s above-quoted statement referred only to graves nos. 1 and 2. I’ll attribute this accusation to Mattogno’s meager reading capacities, for my statement (which Mattogno even quotes) was that "Kola, as the context of his quoted statement suggests, is likely to have meant the lower layers of cremation remains in graves nos. 1 and 2, which he considered to have been used for cremation only, and the layers closest to the corpse layers in the other graves, which after all were up to 5.80 meters deep" (I emphasized the part that Mattogno missed). This had been my explanation for the apparent contradiction between Kola’s reference to the "lower parts of the graves" in the above-quoted text and the individual descriptions of graves 3, 4, 5 and 6, which were stated to contain skeletal remains or corpses in wax-fat transformation in their "lower" parts and cremation remains in their "upper" parts. An alternative possibility is that the "lower parts of the graves" was as simple texting mistake of Prof. Kola’s.

Following this embarrassing accusation, Mattogno again converts the plurality of layers "with a thickness up to 40-60 cm" that Kola refers to into one single such layer, and then argues that layers other than those "particularly noticeable" (or, as he now translates it, "the clearest, the most decipherable (readable)" must have been "uncertain, indecipherable, or irrelevant compared to the main decipherable layers", even though there is nothing in Kola’s text to sustain such interpretation. Then he hypocritically refers to his previous explanation that Prof. Kola’s statements "are not specific enough to permit a quantitative evaluation of the ash present in camp" - which did not keep him from making such calculation based "on the only data considered unambiguous and therefore predominant by Kola himself" (read: on his self-serving interpretation of Prof. Kola’s data, namely the reduction of a plurality of layers to a single one) and high-handedly proclaiming what amount of ashes these data suggest and what amount would remain unaccounted for[318].

This creative falsehood would, even if it were not a falsehood, not serve as a demonstration that the amount of cremation remains found by Prof. Kola’s is incompatible with the amounts calculated in either of Tables 4.1 and 4.2 or 4.4 to 4.7. All of these tables are based on the assumption that all cremation remains ended up in the camp’s burial or ash disposal pits and remained there. Given the evidence that a significant proportion was otherwise disposed of and the impact of robbery digging, this is a merely theoretical assumption.

After referring once more to his overblown residue calculations and lamely claiming to have demonstrated ad nauseam that mine are "inconclusive and deceitful", Mattogno turns to the question why the corpses at the AR camps and at Chełmno had been cremated.

Why Cremation?

In his book about Bełżec, Mattogno had offered two possible explanations for the cremation of the corpses, whose number he had conceded to be "several thousands, perhaps even some tens of thousands": the cremation may have "had to do with the danger of contamination of the ground water" and/or with a concern that the Soviets might discover "mass graves full of corpses dead of disease or malnutrition" and exploit these for propaganda against the Germans[319].

Regarding the first explanation, I had questioned why, if groundwater contamination had been a concern, the SS had dug as deep as the ground water level in the first place, although for "several thousands, perhaps even some tens of thousands" of dead bodies one really didn’t need pits that deep. Regarding the second, I had questioned why, if there was a concern about the Soviets discovering "mass graves full of corpses dead of disease or malnutrition", there had been no effort at cremating corpses at a great many other places where the same concerns would have applied, including smaller concentration camps or sub-camps without installed cremation facilities, labor camps like Treblinka I and especially camps for Soviet POWs of which some had mass graves containing tens of thousands of starvation and disease victims.

In response to my first question, Mattogno argues that at Bełżec the mass graves were not dug as deep as the groundwater level, which had been reached in only one of Prof. Kola’s drilling samples, that "the groundwater level in 1942 may have been different from the one at present" and that "the excavation of shallower pits would certainly not have decreased the risk of leachate reaching the groundwater due to the sandy consistency of the soil". The latter is not exactly true as sandy soil tends to act as a filter[320]. The former is belied by Prof. Kola’s finds that "the analysis of sponge in grave sites indicates in many cases the grave excavations were dug to the depth of 4,50-5,0 m, reaching the underground waters"[321] and underground waters also appeared at a depth of 4.10 meters in grave n.º 1[322], not only in the drill 485/-30-50 grave n.º 10 that Mattogno refers to.

Besides, independently of whether or not ground water level was reached, why were there 7 graves 5 meters deep or deeper, plus another 17 graves 4 meters deep or deeper, among the 33 graves identified by Prof. Kola[323], while on the other hand the graves at Treblinka I labor camp were only "up to 3 meters" deep, and the estimate that they contained "at least 6,500 people" was made "under the assumption that the levels of corpses reach only up to 1.5 m in depth"? Why just (1,607 x 1.5 =) 2,410.5 m³ for 6,500 corpses at Treblinka I, but at least 21,310 m³[324]at Bełżec for just "several thousands, perhaps even some tens of thousands"? Mattogno doesn’t attempt to answer this question, instead harking back to the mass grave capacity issue by asking how, if 1,607 m² of grave area at Treblinka 1 contained only 6,500 corpses, 5,490 m² of mass graves at Bełżec could contain 434,508 corpses. The answer to this question is provided in the response to Mattogno’s chapter 11. [325]

My second question Mattogno doesn’t even attempt to answer, instead changing the subject to what he claims is a major "historiographical" problem (why, despite Blobel’s having received orders from Gruppenführer Müller in June 1942, cremation of corpses didn’t start at about the same time at all camps where mass extermination was conducted), as opposed to my "stupid" question that he tries to avoid. Mattogno’s big problem is actually a false dilemma, considering that a) each Chełmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau pertained to administrative organizations different from each other and from the AR camps, b) the cremations did not start at "wildly divergent times" at the AR camps as Mattogno claims (wholesale cremation at Bełżec and the 2nd phase of cremation at Treblinka started at about the same time, in November 1942, whereas cremation at Sobibór started one month earlier due to that camp’s specific sanitation problems), c) the reason why Chełmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau started cremating earlier, besides the former being Blobel’s experimentation ground, was that sanitation problems became acute at these places at an earlier stage.

Mattogno quotes Shmuel Spector, who claims that "serious health problems" including leakage from the bodies threatening the wells and the drinking water arose at all three AR camps at the end of the summer of 1942, and calls Spector’s "a desperate explanation, which tries to reconcile two irreconcilable themes: the hygienic-sanitary question and Blobel’s alleged mission". Actually the only one of the three camps where the drinking water supply was threatened was Sobibór; at the other two the "noxious odors" also mentioned by Spector were a problem, but there’s no evidence that the drinking water supply was imperiled. And one has to be Mattogno to consider hygienic-sanitary and crime concealment purposes, which were obviously complementary at each of these places, to be "irreconcilable".

Based on Spector’s mistaken claim, Mattogno ends this chapter with the only attempt to explain why the corpses at Treblinka II were burned but the corpses at Treblinka I were not: the (actually non-existing) "serious health problems" at the former, he argues, didn’t exist at the latter "because the corpses were buried outside the camp". As already pointed out in the response to chapter 11, there is no advantage under the aspect of avoiding groundwater pollution that the commandant of Treblinka I could have hoped to gain by burying the camp’s mortality a mere 500 meters away from the camp, while on the other hand one reason for the choice of burial location could have been concealment of huge mortality from potential visitors – after all Treblinka I was a labor camp, not an extermination site[326].

What is even more telling than the failure of this one explanation attempt is that Mattogno cannot provide a single example of the Nazis having resorted to open-air cremation (as opposed to cremation in installed facilities, which was a standard sanitary feature at the major concentration camps run by the SS-WVHA) to dispose of corpses produced by extreme privation, as opposed to such of people they had shot or gassed.

Thus ends my response to chapter 12 of MGK’s magnum opus, which is followed by Mattogno’s "Conclusions on the “Aktion Reinhardt” Camps", including but not limited to the mass graves and cremation topics. I don’t consider it necessary to (again) address these "conclusions", as this series and the preceding response to chapter 11 have amply shown them to be utter nonsense.

Meanwhile, not a single Jew "transited" to the occupied Soviet territories via these supposed "transit camps" has yet been found.

Notes

[296] MGK, Sobibór, p. 148.[297]"Best Management Practices for Wood Ash Used as an Agricultural Soil Amendment" ([link]).[298]MGK, Sobibór, p. 136. [299]As note 296. [300]M&G, Treblinka, pp. 149f. [301]Alex Bay, The Reconstruction of Belzec, "4.6 - Camp II: The Killing and Graves Area" ([link]).[302]See the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 4, Section 2)" ([link]).[303]Same blog as previous note. As mentioned there, the volume of the mass graves may have been higher. [304]See the blog "Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 3)" ([link])[305]As pointed out in Part 2, the SS used various types of solid and liquid fuels, in proportions that can no longer be established. [306]These tables, by the way, contain a spreadsheet formula error (in my disfavor) decried by Mattogno on p. 1454 and by Friedrich Jansson in a blog discussed in the blog "Sad sack Jansson …" ([link]).[307]See the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 1)" ([link]).[308]"In 2008, of a total of 136,073,107 tons of ashes produced in the United States (rounded down to 130 million by Muehlenkamp), as much as 72,454,230 tons were “flying ashes” (fly ash).3120 The fixed ashes were therefore (136,073,107 – 72,454,230 =) 58,846,920 tons. The percentage of the fixed ashes was therefore of (58,846,920 ÷ 10173121 × 100 =) 5.78%."[309]See the investigation reports quoted, partially after Mattogno’s Bełżec book, on pp. 383-385 of the critique. [310]See the blog "Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Introduction and Part 1, Section 1)" ([link]).[311]See the blog "Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Introduction and Part 1, Section 1)" ([link]).[312]Mattogno, Bełżec, p.87. Regarding the dishonesty of Mattogno’s claim that the samples in Kola’s book are the only relevant core samples from mass graves, see Chapter 7 of the critique (pp. 407-408) and the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 3)" ([link]).[313]Andrzej Kola, Bełżec: the Nazi Camp for Jews in Light of Archaeological Sources: Excavations 1997-1999, Warsaw-Washington: The Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000, p. 20. [314]The excavation report is quoted after Mattogno’s Bełżec book on p. 383 of the critique. [315]In her article about archaeological research on the grounds of Chełmno extermination camp (online under [link]), archaeologist Łucja Pawlicka Nowak wrote the following in her description of the pits making up the "fifth grave": "According to W. Bednarz, the depth of the pits was about 4 m, and the width 8-10 m. Even now the flora on the pits is more luxuriant, making this stretch more visible on the surface."[316]"What amount was scattered over forests, what part was sent to Poznań to Fort VII, how much was sent to German settlers as a fertilizer - this we shall never find out. In the second phase of the center operation the ash problem was solved 'simpler' - the ashes were just thrown into the Ner River." (Łucja Pawlicka Nowak, as previous note). During his interrogation on 1 August 1961, Fritz Ismer testified that in the camp’s first phase "These bone remains were to be used as fertilizer, but later they were removed by scattering them in open fields." (see the blog "Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia Part 1, Section 2a" – [link]).[317]MGK, Sobibór, pp. 118 and 148. [318]MGK, Sobibór, p. 148. [319]Mattogno, Bełżec, p. 91. [320]See the blog "Well. Well? Well!" ([link]).[321]Kola, Bełżec, p. 19. [322]As above, p. 21. [323]See critique, Table 7.1 on p. 389. [324]The volume of 33 mass graves estimated by Prof. Kola, not considering the additional mass graves pointed out by Alex Bay (as note 301). [325]See the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 4, Section 1)" ([link]).[326]See the blog ""Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 5, Section 1)" ([link]).